Gardening ~ What are you up to?

The wonderful woman who gave me the sorrel tasting Asian herb has given me a Kafir lime seedling and a tiny, tiny passionfruit seedling. I have potted them up and I am keeping them in the shade because it is hot for the next few days.

PS She explained that the sorrel tasting Asian herb is from Cambodia and is good in salads and stirfries and also in soups where it is added at the last minute. I need to repot the pieces she gave me because they have grown so much. She said not to let it flower or I will have them coming up everywhere!

Re: Gardening ~ What are you up to?

My basil finally died - it's been in a year, and had to contend with crickets munching away at it while I was away over Christmas. I want to replace it, but we're going away for over a month, so will have to wait till I get back. No pesto ...

Otherwise, I have some roses that we got from an Air Force couple who were posting away. They just had them planted in buckets that were now to small for the plants. So we've put them in the front garden, and most are doing really well. But it's the wet season, so I'm fighting off all the fungi with a bicarb soda spray - not sure if it's working very well or not ...

Re: Gardening ~ What are you up to?

How do you make up the bicarb spray CE? Mum gave me two miniature rose bushes last year that she got really cheap from florist that was closing down. I had to spend $30 on nice pots to put them in and now one of the bushes has white spots on the stem and leaves. My neighbour suggested I take a cutting to the garden centre but I don't want to spend more money on products as I really don't "do" plants. They may be heading the way of all other plants mum's given me over the years ............. big green bin!

Re: Gardening ~ What are you up to?

It says for every 1 L of water, mix in 2 tsp of bicarb. soda, a drop or so of oil, and a drop or so of detergent.

The fact sheet says, 'a drop of vegetable oil ... helps to fix the spray to the leaf when it's dried. A drop of detergent helps to spread the mix over the leaf. ... The bicarbonate of soda makes the leaf surface alkaline and this inhibits the germination of fungal spores. Use it on tomatoes, and Chinese celery. The Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney has found this to be effective on powdery mildew, rust and black spot on roses.'

I wasn't finding it particularly effective, particularly on the great globules of white fungus stuff that was growing on some of the stems. So today I put a flat tb (20 mL) of bicarb. soda into 500 mL of water. I also probably used more oil and detergent than the recipe says, because I put a *big* drop of each into my 500 mL of mixture. But again, when I was more accurate to the recipe before, I wasn't finding that the mixture fixed particularly well over the leaves. Of course the leaves may now all curl up and drop off because I've overdone it ... Guess I'll see.

Re: Gardening ~ What are you up to?

Just planning at the moment as everything is under a meter of snow. We'll be having the digger guy come in soon to finish the hard landscaping. We've been waiting for the ice to get deep enough to hold a digger, it needs to be 1 meter deep. as we need to have some of the sediment dug out of the water by the shore so that we have enough clearance for the boat, and to build the jetty, they'll just use this then to build up the shore line, but hopefully they'll manage to keep the copse of Alders we have at the waters edge. We also need topsoil to cover all the rough material, so that hopefully we'll be able to plant a lawn in the spring. Then I think we'll need to take stock of how the site looks, before we do too much planting, though I do know that I want to plant my veg garden on the south side of the house, so that it's protected from the north wind. But otherwise, we're just thinking and taking stock.

Re: Gardening ~ What are you up to?

I repotted my Cambodian herb. I had put five pieces in one pot, hoping one would grow. They all grew! (and some parsley and marigolds came up too!) So I have put them into 5 different pots and will take one to my friends for a gift this evening. I just used my compost mixed with horse manure my neighbour gave me, so hopefully that is good enough soil for them!And I have popped the parsley and marigold in other pots and hope they survive the transplant. (Not too worried about the marigold!)It is such warm wet weather I think anything will grow anywhere!

Re: Gardening ~ What are you up to?

I had an off tomato, so I chopped it up and dropped it in the pot my basil was dying in. I think I may have little tomato plants coming up ... otherwise, it's just weeds, but I don't know how they'd have gotten in there really, since the pot's pretty isolated.

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